Senior / Staff Software Engineer — Product (Backend-Focused)

Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes. We’re looking for Senior and Staff Product Engineers with strong backend engineering experience and a passion for building excellent products. You’ll help shape and deliver product capabilities that make complex workflows easier for users, from data cataloging and agent benchmarking to workflow automation. Working closely with Product, Design, and Engineering, you’ll bring user problems into technical discussions and own backend features from concept through production. We value engineers who pair sound technical judgment with care for the quality, usability, and impact of the products they build.

Responsibilities

Build, ship, and improve backend product capabilities, owning work from understanding the user problem through design, implementation, launch, and production support; Partner closely with Product Managers, designers, and engineers to shape features and turn user needs into intuitive, reliable product experiences; Build and evolve APIs, services, data models, and workflow capabilities that support the product; Help develop products for cataloging and searching data, benchmarking agent performance, and automating post-production and delivery workflows; Investigate and resolve issues across services and data flows, including performance and production problems; Contribute to technical and architecture decisions, with attention to scalability, maintainability, and the needs of the product; Participate in code reviews and help raise the quality of the team’s engineering work; Identify opportunities to improve the product and its underlying systems, and propose practical solutions; Work a hybrid schedule, with at least three days per week in our San Francisco, CA or New York City office

Requirements

7+ years of software engineering experience; Strong backend or backend-oriented full-stack experience building and improving a product; A track record of contributing to polished, intuitive products that make complex tasks easier for users; Experience partnering with Product Managers and other cross-functional teammates to understand user needs and shape product features; Experience building and maintaining backend services and APIs, and working with data stores and queries; Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to write reliable, maintainable code; The ability to investigate technical problems, debug effectively, and make sound decisions within your area of ownership; Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical decisions to both engineering and cross-functional partners; The ability to work independently while collaborating closely with a team; Python is not required; experience with Java, Go, Rust, C++, or another language is welcome so long as strong engineering ability can be demonstrated

Nice to have

Experience with data-heavy products, such as products for organizing, cataloging, searching, or querying complex datasets; Experience with agent workflows, agent evaluations, benchmarking, or analyzing traces of agent activity; Experience building workflow automation; familiarity with DAGs is helpful but not required; Experience in developer tools or other products with sophisticated user workflows; Experience taking a product feature from an initial user problem through launch and continued improvement

Benefits

Meaningful opportunities to shape priorities and initiatives; Influence key strategic decisions; Directly impact ongoing success; Support for deepening technical expertise, exploring leadership opportunities, or learning new skills across multiple functions; Environment designed for growth, learning, and shared success